Joshua Whitfield
April 22, 2019
It is hard to describe the loss of Notre Dame. When the poet Rainer Maria Rilke lived in Paris, each evening on his way home, he stopped as he crossed the Siene on the Île de la Cité to watch the sun set over Notre Dame. The darkening ancient towers silent against the new, awakening, electric […]
April 22, 2019
In the Seventh Circle of Hell, in Dante’s Inferno, in the circle of violence, is a rockslide, rubble as from an earthquake. It wasn’t always ruinous like this, this part of hell. It’s new, Virgil tells Dante; it wasn’t there the last time he came through. Earlier, Virgil had talked about it, the moment hell shook. […]
February 19, 2019
What passes for Christianity, what people see and mistake for Christianity, that’s what’s wrong with it. That Christianity — the phenomena, not the faith — has been eclipsed by parody; it’s why so many dismiss it. Because what’s laughable and incredible isn’t genuine Christianity, but rather a counterfeit too often misconstrued for the real thing.
January 25, 2019
It was the hat, you see, that smile, that smirk. Julie Irwin Zimmerman, writing for The Atlantic, called it a Rorschach test, which is the best way to think of that viral scene involving students from Covington Catholic High School and Nathan Phillips. Proving true what C.S. Lewis wrote: What you see and hear depends upon your point […]
December 9, 2018
Please forgive the topic this morning; it’s tragic and horrific. I want to talk about what happened on October 2, 2006, when Charles Roberts, tormented for years by the loss of his infant daughter, finally snapped. Randomly, it seems, he entered a small Amish schoolhouse near Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania and opened fire; five young girls lost […]